The emperor Diocletian shed the purple mantle for the simple harvest, a choice against the grain of power’s fierce gravity. Twenty-seven years past, in a Beverly Hills hotel room, the same room, Clooney spoke of the lead actor's allotted decade. Ten years to carve a shape in the stone. Then the downward slope. He sits now, sixty-four years worn, doing the work still.
No one, he admits, is more surprised by this persistence. This charm is a practiced thing, yet grounded in an unexpected truth: the prediction of decline failed utterly.
He spoke of McCartney. A video sent, the man playing "When I'm 64." This is the confusing arithmetic of fame: a boy who sliced tobacco in the Kentucky soil finds himself receiving personalized compositions from a titan of history.
"I never really thought," he stated, looking back at Augusta, Kentucky, "that I would meet Paul, much less become friends with him." He feels *awe*. It is an appropriate word. He placed McCartney alongside Jordan, defining the outer limits of mastery. A stark comparison, the athletic grace against the melodic genius, yet accurate in its assessment of historic impact.
This access is the residue of his tenure; the man’s phone contacts, we learned, comprise the necessary inventory of global influence. Every significant figure resides there, an invisible map of connection few others possess.
The risks taken were measured, perhaps, or merely lucky. He navigated the necessary collaborations: Cuarón, the stark vision of the Coens, Payne’s unique melancholy, the relentless speed of Soderbergh. This catalog is not merely work; it is the currency of cinematic respect, a list that dictates elevation.
The question hangs in the air, a residual smoke of unfulfilled ambition: Is there a great architect of narrative yet missed? The incomplete list defines the continuing hunger. The game continues, even when the clock should have stopped twenty years ago.
George Clooney and I are talking in a hotel room in Beverly Hills, the same hotel where we met 27 years ago when he was promoting “Out of Sight” and...Other related sources and context: See here
